Oh Brother (Completed)

All Is Fair

"You can swim, right?" He broke the silence, but the tension remained. "And you're CPR certified?"

"I had to be to help care for my mom." I whispered, immediately retraining my eyes on the beach outside my window. The mention of my mother always hurt, like with every word I spoke about her, the reality of the fact that she was gone set in. The last thing I needed was the hostile and cold boy beside me to see me break.

He parked the car, but when I turned, I found him looking at me. His eyes were a couple shades darker than the rest of our brother's, and held my gaze for what seemed like a decade before they averted to something outside my window. "Come on."

I followed Hudson down the beach, still not quite used to having my body so open and exposed. I could feel the light ocean breeze against my bare torso, rustling the strings of my bikini bottom. Maybe if I talked one of the boys into taking me down to a store I could get a one piece.

"Cadence!" Hudson's entire personality shifted within seconds as a tall, beautiful brunette stepped out from behind a small little shack. She was nothing like the definition of pretty my school had long since engrained into my head. She was all legs, beautiful and perfectly Sunkissed. Her hair was a chocolate brown, blonde highlights woven throughout, with a pair of sunglasses sitting on the bridge of her perfect nose. She wore a red one piece with the words LIFEGUARD in white across.

"Hudson!" She jogged over to us, slowing to just a walk as she approached. "Hey! Long time no see!"

Hudson pulled her into his arms and I watched the cold, icy shield drop. With the disappearance of his façade was a lovestruck teenage boy. The girl circled her arms around him, clearly familiar with the embrace. As soon as she rested her chin on his shoulder, she reached up to pull her glasses off, revealing a pair of brown eyes so light they were almost gold.

"Hi! You must be Arianna!" The girl's voice was a soft. "I'm Cadence Braxton, or Cady. I've heard so much about you!"

I almost laughed at the thought of Hudson talking about me, but his daze has yet to where off and he smiles when he sees my reaction, and says, "Not from me."

"Oh no, from the one that looks like a Greek God." Cady joked, nudging Hudson playfully. "Phoenix, I think?"

Cadence's perkiness was so contagious, that I even fell victim to it. "Don't tell him that. He's already got an ego the size of Texas."

She threw her head back and laughed, grasping Hudson's shoulder with her right hand. There must have been some unspoken communication between the two of them, because he nodded curtly and disappeared into the shack she'd just come out of. Once he was out of view, she leaned toward me and stared hard at the lime green surfboard propped against the wall of the shack.

"You guys are a couple?" I spoke before the silence could grow too awkward.

She offered me a bittersweet smile. "He broke up with me last summer. He said he needed to focus on his mom and what he's going to do after we graduate next year. And I couldn't hate him for wanting to put himself first, you know? So I promised we could stay friends."

"But you still love him?" I guessed. She nodded, running a hand through her hair, eyes fluttering shut for a moment.

"We were together for six years, that kind of love doesn't just go away."

I frowned, thinking back to every memory I had of my parents before the divorce. Not one of them shared the same electricity, the beautiful spark I'd seen shared between my brother and Cady.

"So, what's it like?" She asked, poking my side playfully. It was such a friendly gesture, one that I'd shared with Kinsley once and a while back home, that I could feel myself starting to relax.

"What are you talking about?"

"All those brothers. There's like what, seven of them?"

I smiled, shaking my head as I crossed my arms over my chest and followed her gaze to the beach house. "Phoenix and Damien aren't related to us, but they might as well be."

"Ooh, and Phoenix is the adorable Greek God, right?" She smiled wider when I nodded. "So the broken one that always sits out on the beach must be Damien. Better be careful with that one, girl, those quiet broken ones have a way of sneaking up on you. Trust me, I experienced it first hand."

*

After a few hours of her own personal little orientation, I headed up for the other side of the beach with the promise to return whenever she called with the paperwork done and my CPR card ready to show. Just for management, she had said.

As I sunk into the sane below the hill that held my house, I dropped my gaze to the bracelet around my wrist. A ray from the setting sun hit the small silver fairy charm at just the right angle and shined with such an intensity I had to look away.

"I saw you come down here." Damien stood a few feet away, arms crossed over his chest. "Nix left with Sam an hour ago or else I would have sent him after you. I know you're not a fan of me."

I stared at him, silent, then shook my head and looked back to the water. "I don't have a problem with you, Damien. I have an issue with who you're pretending to be."

"Pretending to be?" He pressed his fingers into the sand, checking for dampness, before sitting beside me. "Can you explain what you mean by that?"

"The Damien I knew talked so much that at one point, Buck and Phil had to throw you into the pool to shut you up." I took a handful of sand and stared down at it. "He had the sweetest heart. He loved fiercely, like his older brother, but was afraid to be caught feeling. So much so that he only cried when he was with the broken little girl in the eye of the storm."

I rolled a grain of sand between my thumb and index finger, blinking rapidly to keep my tears contained.

"You remember that?"

I don't know what I expected Damien to respond with, or if I wanted him to respond at all, but his words weren't at all what I'd anticipated. When I turned my head in his direction again, he wasn't just staring at me, but beyond me. Into me.

"I think that maybe you didn't know the real Damien." He finally whispers, pushing himself up and brushing the sand from his shorts. "I think you should figure out who you are instead of worrying about who I am."

The words were so deflective, so quick and sharp tongued. It was clear that he wasn't one to want to feel things.

"Ari?" I met Damien's eyes, the mess of gray and green a muddled mess.

"Hmm?"

He crouched in front of me, blocking my view of the rushing water. His muddled eyes studied my blank expression for a moment before he touched the index finger on his right hand to my chest.

"That fire, that anger, that bitterness and resentment you have for us for abandoning you. For your mother for leaving you to fend without her. Take them." He paused and for a millisecond I saw that hairline crack I'd been waiting for in his eyes. "And embrace them. You can't keep pushing them down, neglecting them. The longer you wait, the stronger the emotions will become. They'll consume you."

Then the angel eyed demon boy dropped his hand limply to his side and trudged his way back up to the house, leaving his words in his wake.